Western Short StoryClay Hartung, Kid Wrangler Tom Sheehan

Western Short Story

Clay Hartung’s
father said, on many occasions when talk turned to the family around
a campfire or at a saloon with pals, “The boy was born on a horse,
as far as I know. I was away on a drive at the time and his mother
never told me anything different.” He’d chuckle and always add
his final word, “The lady knew her way around the horses, too. You
can say he was born with saddle and reins in his blood.”

When he was 16 by a
few days he was chosen wrangler for Austin Peary’s second drive up
the Chisholm Trail from his ranch near San
Antonio, Texas to Abilene,
Kansas, the railhead
of the Kansas
Pacific Railway. Hartung, as noticed by Peary on his first drive,
was a master horseman from every angle, in the saddle, with the reins
and with a rope. A few of the boys said he talked to horses in their
language, as if the sensation of a hand gesture or a simple cough or
shrug was enough of a message to be obeyed. “That boy’s got
somethin’ goin’ on with all them horses, you ask me,” one of
the older hands declared.

“You
know what I expect of you, son?” Peary spoke directly on the day of
the hire, without any curves in his talk, and wanted answers the same
way.

“Yes,
sir, I do,” Hartung said in reply. “Tend the horses so drovers
never lack one. When danger comes, make sure I keep as many as
possible in my control, where I can see and protect them.”

“You do
that, son, and I’ll see that your share is counted out clean and
accurate. You do your job and I’ll do mine.”

They
shook hands.

At
the end of the drive Peary’s cattle would be sold and shipped
eastward from that railhead at Abilene. Hartung had about 80 horses
to take care of in Peary’s remuda, each one had to be available as
quickly as possible for a rider switching mounts or needing a new
mount. Thus, the horses had to be kept separate from the cattle, each
drover needing about 5 or 6 horses set aside for him for the duration
of the drive.

Even
before the drive started, Hartung had to train horses to accept his
commands, like allowing flimsy restrictions to contain them, such as
a simple rope enclosure or long tethers. Out on the grass, Hartung
had to keep the remuda confined in some manner, usually by a hasty
rope fence on good grass, which also had a hand in holding hungry
animals in place.

As
wrangler he had to know the horses each drover favored and be able to
recognize them immediately at exchange, which could come up any time.
Thus, he had to be good with a rope to catch and hold a horse, be
able to saddle up quickly while the drover might visit the chow
wagon. Now and then he could lean on the ramrod for help, usually an
older man who was capable of every task on a drive, drover to cook,
scout to doctor, ride drag or take the lead. But a wrangler was
responsible at all times for the horses on a drive.

Out on
the trail 16 days later, the first interruption came from a small
group of Indians looking for meat on the hoof. They took three head
with them in their flight, Peary nodding his head as if the exchange
was acceptable. But the attempt at getting some of the horses did not
go well with them, as Hartung managed to get all his remuda tucked
safely into a small canyon when the Indians first made their
intentions known, rising up from the depths of a wadi without having
been seen by the lead scout, who had missed their signs and passed
them by.

That did
not set well with Peary. He chewed out the lead man for at least a
half hour and finished by saying, “You get one more chance, Henry,
and then you get drag if you don’t work it out. You could be there
until we have to carry you home.”

Henry ate
alone, away from the fire, then mounted up slowly and went out to do
his share of night riding. Hartung, watching him disappear into the
shadows of evening, checked his rope enclosure for the third time.
He’d check again and again before night was over.

The next
six days went fairly smooth, with a regular march each day, Peary
apparently pleased with the distance traveled daily. He was talkative
at the campfire, every so often halting his talk to listen to a soft
lullaby coming from the edge of the herd, a night rider singing an
old favorite, the cattle still, the stars wide awake in the velvet
sky.

“Ain’t
that some kind of a song, boys?” he said. “Makes me think of a
neighbor when I was a kid back home, sitting alone on his dark porch
and putting the whole night to sleep and everything in it.”

“Did
you hear those songs all the way through, Boss?”

Peary
thought about that and said, “Some of those songs are the kind you
never hear the end of, they do the job so good.”

He rolled
over on his blanket and fell asleep, the lullaby out on the grass
fading away in the darkness, the stars in their slow roll across the
heavens, the cattle still and silent.

The
idyllic scene was broken up hours later with gunshots and the
thundering sound of cattle rushing ahead of the gunshots, and a lot
of yelling and men rushing into boots and calling for their horse and
Clay Hartung up and in the saddle and holding his horses in the rope
enclosure. Drovers mounted in a hurry, headed out to head off the
stampeding cattle.

Six
rustlers were trying to drive much of the herd onto wide open grass,
one column of cattle breaking for the north and another heading
almost due south, the herd split as planned.

Peary
motioned to three men and they headed south along one part of the
stampede, firing guns at intervals, trying to turn the herd back.
Other men headed after the northward herd, all of them aware of the
split-up attempt of the rustlers to divide not only the herd, but the
company of drovers, and the remuda as well.

Hartung
sat his horse, waiting for the attempt to run off his horses onto the
prairie. In a piece of skyline light of the false dawn, he saw a
rider coming down an incline near his horses. He rode straight at the
last point where he had seen the other rider, and pulled his rifle
from the scabbard. He held his horse beside one huge rock and as the
mystery rider came by him, he knocked him out of the saddle with one
swing of his rifle, butt first.

He had
protected the remuda without firing a shot. “So far, so good,” he
said to himself, thinking about the situation as he headed back to
the temporary enclosure, hoping the rustlers had assigned just the
one man to get the remuda on the run.

He found
the horses excited, straining at their ropes, but holding in place.
His presence seemed to calm them as the sound of gunshots, flatter,
duller, came from further away, out on the wide prairie.

It took a
few hours of hard work, some daring and clever riding, and accurate
firing of weapons, but the rustlers were driven off, the herd
re-gathered, and morning came with high sunshine.

When
Peary and some of the drovers came back to camp, the chuck wagon
busy, they found 16-year old Clay Hartung, drive wrangler, keeping
company with a trussed up and hurting stranger sitting beside the
fire. The stranger looked to be in considerable pain, remnants of
blood on his face as well as on his shirt.

“He
tried for the horses, Boss, but he didn’t get far,” Hartung said.
“I didn’t ask him any questions. Figured I’d leave that to
you.”

Peary
nodded, looked at his trail boss and said, “What do you figure,
Smiley?”

“A
hundred head loose somewhere, but not with that gang. We run them
clean out of here. Won’t be long I get most of them back. Leave a
few for the Cherokee, Choctaw, or maybe Chickasaw.
I saw them sitting up there.” Smiley Wescott nodded to the
foothills. “I’d guess them to be Cherokee, but I ain’t sure.”

“That’s
good hoping and good thinking, Smiley. Take who you want with you.”

Wescott
sidle up to Peary and said, “The kid did a hell of a job, Boss,
knocking our guest right out of the saddle without firing a shot.
When you talk to our sore company here, ask him who was in the gang.
See if you can find out if Bart Tuskin was one of them. I thought I
recognized an old saddle pard. I see him again, I’ll run him in as
a rustler. He never was too honest to begin with. This one’s name
is Scotty O’Donnell. I got that much out of him.”

Wescott
signaled to two men and the trio rode off.

Peary,
standing above the captured rustler O’Donnell and said, “I’m
not going to spend too much of my time with you, son. I got cows to
move, but if I was you I’d tell me in a hurry who was with you. You
know they ain’t coming back for you. So you best tell me who was
with you, or I turn you over to the kid again. I know he won’t be
so careful next time. I just told him to bring me a prisoner and he
plain old-fashioned got me one. Tell me who was with you. If one of
them’s Bart Tuskin, you won’t have to tell me. But I’ll make
sure they figure you did. He one of them?”

“Yeh,
he was with us. Purly Yates set it up.”

“Where’ll
they hole up?”

“Up in
the Mescalili country, in a cabin in one of them canyons. Miners were
there once.”

“Well,
son,” Peary said, “I’m not letting you go now, and I don’t
like the idea of feeding you and having a man watch you all the time,
unless it’s the kid. But when we get this herd delivered, we’re
going up after them owl hoots. I’ll let you go then, but of course
the gang will know you told us. We’ll make sure of that, so when
the time comes, you better make fast tracks out of this country or
they’ll be after you like their own posse.”

When
the cattle were delivered to Abilene, Peary told his men what he was
about to do concerning the rustlers. They all agreed to a man that
something had to be done. As they were about to go off on the hunt,
Hartung approached Peary and said, “Boss, can I talk to for a few
minutes, away from the others.” The two rode off to the shade of a
tree and talked for 15 minutes.

“Are
you sure about this, Clay? Think this is the way to go.”

“I do,
Boss. It’s a cinch.”

Three
days later, shy of Mescalili country, Hartung began to race his horse
back and forth across the prairie. Finally, after an arduous ride, he
rode off in an easterly direction, his horse heated, tired from the
run. About an hour later, after another shorter run, he rode his
horse into the Mescalili canyon where the hide-out was located.

A
look-out spotted him easily and warned the others. They surrounded
Hartung quickly and brought him to a cabin at the deep end of the
canyon.

“Who
are you kid? What are you doing here?” one man said, obviously the
leader of the pack.

“Hell,”
said Hartung, “I found a couple of longhorns and was selling them
to a farmer, a squatter, and he pointed out the brand on them. I
never noticed them before. He sent his son to get the sheriff, so I
split out of there in a hurry. I hope no one followed me.”

“Why’d
you come up here? What was that brand the squatter saw? I got lots of
questions for you, kid.”

“The
brand was AP Square. I never saw it before. I ain’t never been up
this side of the country. I just wanted to get out of the way if I
could. This looked like a good place.”

“What’s
your name, kid?”

“Clay
Brady. From nowhere in general. Been alone for years, since my old
man ran out on me.”

“Well,
kid, my old man did the same thing. My name’s Purly Yates. This
here’s Paulie and that’s Butch and this ugly one over here is
Bart Tuskin. We’re interested in that herd or what’s left of it.”

“Well,
there’s more than a hundred of them in a canyon back down the
trail. I was able to drive them into the back end of the canyon and
fence them up with some blow downs. But there’s no way I could
handle them all, so I figured I could do a few at a time. I guess I
picked on an honest squatter, not that you can find that many out
this way.”

“You’re
okay, kid,” Yates said. “We can join up and get them cattle into
the right hands. We’ll share the cut. Be a piece of cake, them
drovers long gone on their way.”

Hartung
smiled and said, “Sounds great to me. Maybe I can get to talk to
that squatter again, if you don’t mind.”

“You’re
okay, kid. Sure, give him a piece of your mind. Ha, that’s good.
Serve him right for blabbing.”

It was in
the early evening, with enough tracks showing traffic on the way into
the selected canyon, that the rustlers were pinned down by a solid
crossfire and threw their guns down.

Hartung,
leading the gang toward the blow downs at the end of the canyon, was
able to duck in behind a sheaf of rock and hide from the cross fire.

Trussed
and tossed on their saddles and on the way to justice, the rustlers
were quiet until Yates said, “That kid lead us into this?”

“No,
he really didn’t,” Peary offered. “It was one of your own that
did that, Scotty O’Donnell, the one you sent after his horses. He
got knocked clean out of the saddle by the kid, who’s my wrangler
right now. Next drive, next year, he’s apt to be my trail boss.
Boy’s got a lot going for him besides horses.”

“Oh.
Yeah,” Purly Yates said. “How old is he.”

Peary
qualified his answer, saying, “His pa says he’s 16. Could be 60
on a good day for all I know. But today’s one of his good days. You
got to agree with me on that.”